The State of Dreams (Requiem for California)

Sultan Knish ^ | 08 Oct 2022 | Daniel Greenfield

[Chad C. Mulligan]

The great westward drive that began with Lewis and Clark has been steadily rolling backward. Southern California is filled with moving trucks headed to Arizona, Texas and Nevada. Those who can afford it, fly to Florida. The Russians were here once and then the Spanish. The American presence in California was more comprehensive and lasted longer, but may one day leave sagging Wells Fargo banks and decrepit mini malls filled with sushi places and nail salons the way the Spanish left their missions.

It's a beautiful country, but so is Afghanistan and any number of otherwise unlivable places. Every other visit to a store seems to end with a shoplifter boldly walking out with a few items in hand. Sometimes a cashier, usually young and male, shouts futilely, "Hey, sir" into the wind. A few older women, cashiers and customers, mutter about how it's hurting everyone. A manager says this is the new normal. No one connects it to the coming elections. The media tells them that the madness is a social phenomenon, a response to inequality, the pandemic, and climate change, and they never bother to argue.

We think of Third World countries as poor, but they're not. Visit Karachi, Cairo and Jakarta, or even Baghdad, Gaza, or even Kabul, and you'll see great riches and even greater poverty. The problem with income inequality isn't that CEOs make two million times what their employees do, it's that there's nothing in the middle. The middle class makes a society, sane and livable. It gives people something to reach for rather than beating their wives or knifing their neighbors in the dark. The bourgeois is civilization. Without the middle class, there's barbarism, a crude hierarchy and the rule of force.

RTWT

[Big Red Badger]

Cut and Past-— gee
Hope you don’t break a Nail!
.
From 2003 to 2008 I was with the
Minutemen on the border in Campo California.
I’d say That was a real Fight.

.
On my own ‘Dime’ pal.
.
I voted Trump in 2020 and I’d bet he took it in a landslide BUT THEY STOLE IT !!!
Now what Exactly are You ‘Doing’
To save CALIFORNIA???
.
I’d like to know because I was born and raised there and I miss My Beaches!